How the Beatles are Letting Down a Whole Generation

Executive summary: the Beatles are screwing over younger generations of music fans by not allowing their music to be streamed. This comes from The Next Web:

For musicians, there’s a lot wrong with streaming services. They replace substantial sales revenue with a trickle of income, and they arguably encourage listeners to snack on individual songs rather than appreciating whole albums as works of art.

And yet streaming is increasingly how listeners want to consume music, and what are musicians without their audience?

For the Beatles, the continued absense from Spotify, Apple Music and their ilk is thanks to the same ‘we’re premium and deserve special treatment’ attitude that meant I could never afford their CDs as a kid because they were generally priced way higher than anyone else’s even though they were already three decades old by that point. It’s the same attitude that held them off iTunes for years, too.

Yes, the Beatles‘ music has a special place in music history but now that much of their output is FIFTY years old, the multi-millionaires who guard the band’s estate (including surviving members Paul and Ringo) should embrace its place cultural history and make it available where people – especially young people who are exploring pop history for the first time – can easily access it.

Yep. That’s about right. Continue reading.

Once you’re done, try this story about the time when Indonesia contact the Australian government to tell them to cut it out when it came to playing the Beatles on the radio.